


Breaking the Vow

by kikubeamblah



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikubeamblah/pseuds/kikubeamblah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In short, Levi reflects on how his relationship with Eren unfolded, and as a result is launched back into his memories.</p>
<p>Sample: Sometimes, I think that he may have actually been a test sent by God.  This is what I mean by saying that I could almost believe that God is real and true.  But, how arrogant would it be to think that God sent me, a puny human such a test?  </p>
<p>If it were a test though, I definitely, completely failed.  No argument there.</p>
<p>To be fair though, I don’t even think God himself could have kept such a promise, had he been faced with Eren Jaeger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking the Vow

**Author's Note:**

> there is so much that i could say about this fic, but i am allowing levi to take control. you should know that writing levi is unfairly natural for me. for the last week, i’ve been desiring to write some ereri, but all i could come up with were shortfics and while they were sweet, i wanted more. today, i had the sudden realization of what i could write, a more complete story. 
> 
> having read what it means to feel by opulence/rivaille-fetish, i decided to try my hand at first person. if you don’t like first person, then i’m sorry. third person is what i am more comfortable with as well. this prologue is some weird first person journaling perspective, but the future chapters will be in true first person. the story is hopefully interesting. One warning is that there are a lot of people in this story and there are only so many SNK characters to work with, so there will be OCs, but there will (slowly) be a lot of the cast too. I needed more people to work with though and I am a noob to this show anyway.
> 
> un-betaed sorry. but, i do a lot of writing, so i swear there won’t be too many typos.

To me, however many years from now,

 

I stared at the blank page for awhile before I began to write this, pen in hand.  My watch ticked on my wrist.  Seconds which would turn into minutes.  I felt doubt build up inside of me and wondered if I should even bother writing this.  Then, of course, I did what anyone else would do.  I went straight for my phone which was sitting on my desk next to the pen, and began to surf the web.  I landed on Facebook, where his present fuck, or as he would say, green eyes wide and determined, _the love of his life_ had posted a status about how today was the birthday of a certain green eyed man and how much he loved him.  _Yes_ , I am Facebook friends with his present fuck.  That probably surprises you.  It should.  The road to here has been long, painful, but I’ve endured and here we are.  If nothing else, I am a survivor.

 

Were it a few years ago, seeing this post would have rendered me broken.  Being that it is so full of love and happiness with him it would remind me yet again, that he and I would never and could never be.  And being reminded of that would have surely hurt me.  Yes, I’m certain that I would have crumbled and tears would have fallen on this page, this page which I presently write.  Strangely, when my eyes pored over the post, I didn’t feel anything negative.  I was amused.  And so, I did what any other normal friend would have done, and I sent him a birthday snapchat.  The photo was of me smiling at my desk, and then, using the color palette in the application, I added a balloon in hand and a party hat on my head.  And then, I typed in the textbox, “Happy Birthday!”  Silly, stupid; I know.  But, it earned me a four second reply of him smiling and saying thanks.

 

_Of course_ , it is his birthday.  I haven’t even checked the calendar, but it makes fucking sense.  Of course, I would fucking decide to begin writing this on _his_ birthday.  The story of my fucking life, I suppose.  Literally.  That is what this is.  I am writing _our_ story and it’s _his_ birthday.  Isn’t that _funny_?

 

Hey, you.  I guess I probably should have said this earlier, but I didn’t.  If you’ve found this, I hope you’ll just _put it back_.  I’m not sure why your dirty fucking hands would be pawing through my desk, but if they are, just put this back.

 

I especially hope you’ll do this, if you know me. 

 

Then again, if you know me, and are in my apartment, then you’re probably used to all of my shit anyway.  You probably already know this story in detail.  How you’re still friends with me, I don’t know.  Why _you_ like everyone else didn’t pick him, I don’t know.  No, I’m not fishing for compliments, you all have told me again and again that I’m amazing and smart and wonderful, it’s just not easy for me to believe that anyone else would think such a thing.  I mean, _I_ know it, but that someone else could recognize it too in this stupid world is pretty darn amazing.  _But_ , if you know me, you know that too.  And so, if you are one of the few cherished people who I call friends, I guess you can continue.

 

Since you’re going to continue reading this, I guess there are some things you should know, if you don’t already.  I’ll lay these out clearly.

 

_Everything that I write here is true_.  That’s not easy for me to do, there’s a lot of this that I would like to write differently, a lot of this that I wish had happened differently.  But, not everything.  _Yes_ , the sickest fucking part of this story is that I, Rivaille, do not regret everything that I did.  I did cruel things.  And I don’t regret them.  I _should_ , but I don’t.  At some point while you read this, you will almost certainly think, there is no way that you would ever do that or think that, Levi.  It’s too mean, too cruel.  It can’t be true.  

 

It _is_ true.  You’re not the first person to think I’m a monster and you won’t be the last.  The Russians have a saying, “Man is wolf to man.”  In essence, man is cruelest to himself and to each other.  I exemplify this.  I am the worst enemy of myself and of everyone around me.  But, I continue to carry on.

 

After all, if I blamed myself for everything, if I regretted everything, I’d be dead.  I would have had to off myself, because unlike him, I had no support system.  Back then, no one ever understood how I felt.  No one even cared to try.  Well, I won’t do that.  I won’t speak for the people in past, but it sure as hell seemed that way to me.  Everyone solely looked at him and thought that I was the problem and everything was my fault, but no one tried to understand my feelings.

 

That said, this won’t be a series of excuses.  I’m going to tell it all, and I’m going to tell it truthfully.  I want to answer once and for all, the question of how things went the way they went.  I want to lay out clearly, how we ended up here.  And I just do not want to hear stupid shit like “Levi would never do that,” in response.

 

Levi did do _that_ **.** So, fuck you.  Don’t tell me what I did and didn’t do.

 

The other thing that you should know is that this a draft.  This is a first draft.  Have _you_ ever sat down and tried to write the story of your life?  You’ll find it’s incredibly fucking difficult.  You never know where to begin.  Should I begin at birth?  Should I begin with the first man I found attractive?  Should I begin when the most important one made the move that changed everything?  Should I begin where I fucked the first time?  And worse, even if you do find a way to begin, it’s hard to continue.  The memories come flooding back and you can’t even catch them.  There’s no time or way to write them down.  You just live them.  You get lost in the past.

 

The other troubling matter is detail.  It’s hard to know what events matter when you write about yourself.  The things that matter to me, may not actually be all that important.  Other details, may seem minor, but they may change everything.  So, maybe I’ve included some things that don’t matter.  Sorry about that.  But frankly, like I said above, the only audience for this story is me anyway, so I’m not sure why you think you can tell me that such and such scene doesn’t belong, such and such person doesn’t belong.  Such and such scene happened, such and such person affected me.  In short, _my life happened_.

 

The last thing that I will say is that life is not happy.  Not truly.  Maybe for the sake of closure, I’ll write a happy ending to this.  I don’t want anyone else to cry.  But, you should know, that’s not really what happened.  There were a lot of tears shed, there was a lot of angst, a lot of drama, and ultimately, the unfolding of a tragedy.

 

But, that’s life, right?

 

God, I hope where I chose to begin isn’t too crappy.  

 

Well, here it goes.

 

I had an unusual childhood.  _He_ told me this again and again, when we were together.  He told me that I was the smartest person in the fucking world.  He told me that I experienced more than anyone should ever have to and as a result, I had become the smartest person in the world.  I disagreed.  I still disagree, but I am pretty fucking smart.  This...training of sorts, began when I was young.  I won’t get into too much detail about my childhood or the time before I knew him now, but there are a few things that I have to lay out.

 

I will say two things.  One, when I was a child I was the most hopeful kid you could have ever imagined.  It seems strange, I’m sure.  But, I believed _everything_.  I believed things that most people didn’t.  Santa?  I was fully convinced he was real.  Fully.  You could not tell me otherwise.  My birthday was on Christmas and it was possibly my favorite day every year.  Many kids tried to shatter this illusion, but I ignored them.  I believed my Mom when she told me that the mall Santas were fake, but that the guy who the company she worked for paid to be Santa in their ads was the real one.  He had gifts for me every year and it was this whole thing the adults in my life constructed.  And I believed it.  I believed anything and everything that my Mom told me.

 

I also was convinced that the Native Americans truly had sat down with the pilgrims and had a great feast.  I also believed that people were all good.  That we all loved each other.  I believed in society.  When I learned that none of this was true, when I learned what a shitty place the world was, my entire worldview came crashing down, everything changed.

 

Or at least, that’s what I wish happened.  I wish it had happened in one swift motion, like the ripping off of a band-aid.  Instead, it was more like making confetti.  Things were torn apart slowly.  My world crumbled slowly.  Maybe that is why all of this shit happened the way that it did.

 

The other that I have to mention is that I had a religious upbringing.  You can probably imagine where I’m going with this.  And that was one of the things that took the longest to tear apart.  I sometimes wonder if this hadn’t been the case, if I hadn’t been born into a Christian family, if things would have gone the way that they did.  Till today, when asked, I still call myself a Christian.  It’s like a kneejerk reaction now.  In practice, I’ve become agnostic.  I’m no longer as sure as I was that God exists, I border on being a complete atheist, and in other ways, I’m more sure than I ever was as an indoctrinated child.  But, I don’t know.  I don’t know anything.

 

That’s not true, I know one thing with certainty.  I know that if there’s a hell, I’m going there.  I’m not sure if I’ll go because I’m gay or because of the shit that I’ve done, but the second I die, if it exists, that’s where I’ll be.  I prefer to think that the gay has nothing to do with it, but I know, I’m definitely something which can’t be cleansed.

 

The gay part of my identity is probably the stablest thing I’ve known about myself.  I’ve known it for the longest time and yet, it is still one of the last things that I tell people about myself.  It was not even easy to write that I am gay, but I think I was able to do it because I know no one will ever find this.  Hell, when I’m finished I’ll probably fucking burn this to ensure that no one sees it.

 

I don’t even remember the name of the person who made me realize that I was gay.  You’d think that I would, right?  You’d think that the name of the person who turned your entire world upsidedown as a child would be something you’d remember.  I don’t.  We’ll just call him Jared, I guess.

 

Okay, _fine_.  I promised to tell the truth and so, I’ll tell you here that I’m lying.  I _do_ remember his name, but I don’t want to write it.  It seems unfair that some innocent guy who never did anything wrong to me and may have been the most genuinely kind person I ever knew should have to be immortalized in this self-wallowing shitstorm.  It seems unfair to him that I should even be able to still think of his name.  So, accept that I’m calling him Jared.  

 

I met him at Christian summer camp in the deep South.  A summer camp in Tennessee to be precise.  My grandparents were originally from there and so, we spent every summer in the hellish humidity of the South.  And when I got to the end of eighth grade, I had finally whined enough to convince my Mother that I was old enough to go to summer camp there.  She decided that it was okay.  And so, during the summer between eighth and ninth grade, the summer before I went to high school, I went to sleepaway camp.  I could not have been more excited.  For several years we had driven past hundreds of camps in the South with happy kids.  We had a family friend or relative or something who actually ran one.  I think that’s how I got particularly interested, but that person ran a camp for girls.  So, I obviously wasn’t going to be going to camp there.  But, they had horses, tennis courts, swimming pools, and basically, everything you’d ever want to be around.  I knew that I wanted to go to a boy’s camp.

 

I begged.  I begged like crazy to go to camp.  I never thought my mother would relent.  I later found out why she never wanted me out of her sight and why she was particularly concerned about sending me to camp, but that’s a tragedy that I’m not going to get into now.  During the summer after eighth grade she allowed it and so, off I went.  

 

Some people in my family credit going to sleepaway camp as being where I established my independence, or where I learned to be independent.  I’m not sure where or when that happened, I think my independent spirit is something I’ve always had.  I was an only child after all.  Well, sort of.  I’m not getting into that yet.  I spent my childhood as an only child.  And it’s really the way that you spend your childhood that counts.  There were no other brats who were obligated to play with me and so I learned how to entertain myself.  

 

To this day, I need no one in my life.  Really.  It took years for me to realize that this outlook was wrong.  We’ll get there too.  Writing this as it happened is really fucking hard to do.  I keep wanting to comment with my present feelings or interject things that happened later.

 

What I can say for certain is that I was not independent while I was _at_ sleepaway camp, but my independence may have happened as a result of what went on while I was at sleepaway camp.

 

Either way, getting to go to camp was the most exciting thing in the world for me.  We packed my trunk and my family dropped me off at my cabin.  

 

Like every other fucking experience in my life, camp was not as good as it seemed.  As excited as I was for sleepaway camp, as many years as I had waited to go to sleepaway camp, it ended up being a horrendous experience.  I was immediately singled out for my accent.  Although my family sent me to camp in the South where my grandparents were, I was raised in Massachusetts and I did not have the means to say “y’all”.  I didn’t have any sort of southern drawl.  I was a Yankee and given my scrawny ass, I was an easy target for bullies.  

 

Or that’s what they said.  In reality, perhaps it was none of that.  Perhaps they saw the gay before I did.  I have no idea.  Whatever it was, they picked on me.

 

Still, it was okay.  After all, Jared, my bunkmate, protected me.  I should note that he was classically attractive as a boy.  I remember thinking that I wanted to have muscles like his.  I wanted to be sculpted like him.  I remember thinking that he was cool.  Too cool to be protecting my hide.  Imagine being the geeky kid in high school and having the fucking quarterback tell some guy to leave you alone.  Jared was the eighth grade summer camp equivalent of that.

 

He taught me how to fight.  He taught me how to stand up for myself.  If he noticed it, he didn’t mind the way that I looked at him either.  If the other kids taunted him too for protecting me, he never treated me bitterly.  Sometime later, I postulated that he was in fact _gay_ , and _may_ have felt the same way that I did and that may have been why he chose to protect me or train me, but I think now that’s my own arrogance shining through.  I have no reason to assume anything about him except that he was simply a good, true, nice straight guy.

 

Still, my feelings about him haunted me.  I was an innocent kid at the time and so I knew nothing about anything.  But, I got this weird feeling around him and I knew what it meant.  It was the feeling that I was _supposed_ to have about girls.  Every other kid seemed to be exiting out of their girls having cooties phase, and it seemed it was time for me to leave that phase behind as well.  Unfortunately, I didn’t exit it properly.  Somehow, those thoughts and feelings that I should have had about women, I had about men.  I especially had them about Jared.

 

These feelings, these thoughts, and the strange dreams that came with them about Jared did not end after camp.  Camp had ended, but they had not.  The summer too was ending, but the feelings were not.  But, time marched on and I marched with it.

 

As we did every Sunday, the week after camp ended, my family took me to Church.  We were still in the South at that point.  Two weeks later school would begin and we’d go back up North, but for the time being I was still stuck in the sticky Southern humidity. 

 

I don’t remember much about Church.  I went for years with my family, and when I go on vacation with my extended family now, I unfortunately still get dragged to Church.  I do, however, remember _that_ Sunday in Church.  I remember it clearly.  I remember the shimmer of the gloss covering the wooden pews.  I remember the faded covers of the Bibles sitting on them.  I remember the ripples in the stained glass windows.  I remember the short rays of sun that pushed through those windows, being colored by the glass and reflecting on the seats.  I remember the sweat seeping through my Sunday clothes, as there was no air conditioner, nor any fans in the Church.

 

Yes, I remember sitting in that tiny Church in Tennessee on that Sunday with my family.  There was no Sunday school at that Church which meant that for the full hour or so of the sermon, I was stuck with my family.  I sat in the corner of the pew next to the window.  My family was there too, my grandfather sat beside me.  I was quiet.  Well-behaved.  

 

And I sobbed.  I couldn’t stop crying.  Because as I was sitting there, there was only one thing on my mind, Jared.

 

My family said nothing, my family did nothing, because even though they were sitting right there, they didn’t know.  They had no idea I was crying, and I don’t blame them.  I didn’t want them to know.  I made sure that they didn’t know.

 

I was careful to keep my mouth shut.  I was careful not to utter a sound.  I was careful to ensure that I did not cry so much that someone would notice the wetness on my face.  I had learned how to cry silently.  Can’t say for sure about independence, but crying silent tears?  _That_ I had learned at camp.  After all, if anyone saw me crying there, I’d get mocked.  If anyone saw me crying here, I’d have no excuse, no explanation, and that was something I couldn’t bear either.

 

And so, silently, the tears streamed down my face.  I felt like such a sinner and I fucking knew I was.  I felt so wrong sitting there in God’s house thinking about Jared.

 

And so, I did the only thing that I knew how to do at the time.  You have to remember, back then, I believed in authority.  I believed in anything.  I believed good things happened to good people.  And I believed that aside from these vile thoughts, aside from this sin, I was a good person.  I would continue to be a good person.

 

Yes, _that’s right_ , I tried to pray the gay away.

 

Yes, people _really_ do this.  And yes, _I_ am one of those people.  And yes, this is something I would have liked to lie about.  I am ashamed to admit that I was that weak.  The tears stopped.  They dried on my face.  I felt determined.  I felt certain.  _This_ would work.  This _had_ to work.  

 

My eyes shut tight.  I pressed my hands hard against each other.  I was careful to line my fingers up together.  And I prayed the hardest, most sincere prayer I had ever prayed in my life.

 

Here was my prayer, as best I remember:

 

_Dear God, I promise I’ll be good.  I’ll do my best to never make Mom or Dad mad.  I’ll do everything right.  I’ll do my best in school.  I’ll do my best at everything.  I promise I’ll never touch or be with a boy.  I promise.  Please take these thoughts away.  Please send me a girl who I can fall in love with.  So, please...please make me not be gay.  Amen._

 

I don’t think that I said the part about being gay in there.  I’m not sure whether I fully knew that I was gay back then.  I think I probably still believed that Jared could be the only guy I’d ever feel that way about.  Then again, given what little shits kids are, I probably called myself and thought of myself as something worse.  Maybe I called myself a fag or a piece of shit or any of the other hundred things I’ve been called since.  I doubt it though.  I mean, I _was_ talking to God and I did revere Him _._ Maybe I just said, “Please make me not like boys.”  Maybe I talked about Jared specifically. Yeah, that’s probably what I did.  I have no idea.  Honest.  I’m not going to lie about this prayer.  But, even so, the prayer itself is not the part that matters.

 

The important part is that I didn’t keep my vow to God.  _Obviously._

 

Sometimes, I think that he may have actually been a test sent by God.  This is what I mean by saying that I could almost believe that God is real and true.  But, how arrogant would it be to think that God sent me, a puny human such a test?  

 

If it were a test though, I definitely, completely failed.  No argument there.

 

If you are someone who looks for signs, it does make sense that _he_ was a test.  After all, it was the following fall that I met _him_.  He entered my life, and I was doomed to fail.  And at the time we met, I had no idea.  I wasn’t remotely attracted to him when I was introduced to him.  Honest.  It was years before I was attracted to him.  I am ashamed that I ever was attracted to him to be completely honest.  Not even because of the promise to God, but because seriously, some of the dumbest shit fell from his mouth.  Like really, how could _I_ have ever been attracted to him?

 

But, Christ, I fell in love with him and I did touch him.  As much as I tried to hold back, and I did try, I touched him again and again over the years.

 

I didn’t mean to lie to God, truly.  I didn’t mean to make such a promise.  I shouldn’t have made that promise.

 

To be fair though, I don’t even think God himself could have kept such a promise, had he been faced with _Eren Jaeger_.

**Author's Note:**

> okay, it’s not all going to be journals. this launches him into his memories. but, once in awhile, present!levi will reflect on them or comment on them. I think it’s better if it unfolds as it did.


End file.
